Electrical woes

I own a 1989 Skeeter 175SX with a 1989 Mercury 150 XR4 Black Max. The battery was being drained slowly. When I connected a meter to the + and - leads it was very minimal... 1.5-2.0 Megs. I started chasing the cause down and found the culprit to be 1 of the 3 wires going into the powerpack. The red wire. The other 2 are grey and violet. Does anyone know why this could be? I did not go any further. I wanted to see if anyone might know the problem before I took off the powerpack. Any help would be appreciated. Oh, the red wire when checked to -<br />showed 10.6 K-Ohms.

Re: Electrical woes

The experts will surely kick in and help you, but any resistance off your battery terminals will eventually drain her down. 10k is a lot of R, but over time, it will drain it.<br /><br />Mark

Re: Electrical woes

its normal, but get your meter on the amps scale not the ohms scale, then attach the +lead to the +batt term and the - leat to the + cable<br /> good thing the voltage regulator assy does not draw much or your meter could have toasted.<br /><br /> on the ohms scale your inserting the meter battery current into the circuit and the meters circuitry cant take much, on the amps scale its using current frow through the meter and to the load to sense electron flow. on the volts scale it uses a small circuit current through a large resistor,normally 10 MOhms, to deflect the scale.<br /> any resistance tests MUST be done with the circuit dissconected from the source and any parralell circuits or series circuits taken into account.<br />from the dissconected redwire at the regulator to the +batt cable terminal should be less than 1 ohm.<br /> but the regulator rectifier is a device with solid state components and they are known to bleed current. thats why battery switches are soooo nice.<br />certain bilge pumps bleed current as do various electronics.<br /> but the entire hull system can be checked for current drain with the amp setting.

Re: Electrical woes

the power pack, known as switch boxes on the merc, is not attached to any part of the engine 12 v system on that motor. your engine has 2 switch boxes, some had a regulator and a rectifier and others had an unregulated rectifier system

Re: Electrical woes

The red wire is the hot to the regulator. It does have a draw and should kill a battery in 2 to 4 weeks. If this could be a issue, install a Perko switch. The grey is the tachometer lead, the purple is the ignition "on" wire.